Justice Gained?: Crime and Crime Control in South Africa's Transition

Ten years into South Africa's new democracy, crime and what should be done about it are the subjects of endless debate. Arguments range from the accuracy of the country's crime statistics to the state of its prisons. But why is crime such a persistent problem? How have patterns of offending changed over the course of South Africa's transition to democracy? And how have crime control practices altered in response to the challenges of the post-apartheid era? This book sets out to answer these questions by providing a critical commentary on some of the key issues in contemporary South African criminology. Written by authors with extensive experience as teachers, researchers, policy advisers and practitioners, the essays collected in this book challenge some of the received wisdoms re-emerging in a discipline in danger both of forgetting its own history, and of misunderstanding the role of critical social science in a democratic South Africa. Written in a deliberately accessible style and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume of essays is the third in a series of critical studies in criminology produced under the auspices of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cape Town. Contents: Preface; Notes on contributors; Introduction: Justice Gained? Crime, Crime Control and Criminology in Transition, Bill Dixon; 1 'A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake': Politics and Crime in the Transition to Democracy in South Africa, Graeme Simpson; 2 Out of the Mainstream: Critical Reflections on Organised Crime in the Western Cape, André Standing; 3 Guns and Public Policy in South Africa, Anthony Altbeker; 4 Murder and Capital Punishment after Apartheid, Rob Turrell; 5 Child Justice and Diversion: Will Children's Rights Outlast the Transition?, Brian Stout and Catherine Wood; 6 Acting against Domestic Violence, Dee Smythe and Penny Parenzee; 7 Cosmetic Crime Prevention, Bill Dixon; 8 South African Policing Studies in the Making, Elrena van der Spuy; 9 Swimming against the Tide: Controlling the Size of the Prison Population in the New South Africa, Dirk van Zyl Smit; Index